Small Press Finalist #25 - If a Butterfly

If a Butterfly
Mainstream Fiction
240,000

Query:

If a butterfly flaps its wings on its journey from Canada to Mexico, will hurricanes attack America’s East Coast? Will there be sex in space? Will a married couple manage to survive spending thirty straight days together on vacation? The mainstream novel, If a Butterfly, is like Six Degrees of Separation From Kevin Bacon, but with a butterfly.

When a couple, driving across the country, accidentally “kidnap” a Monarch butterfly and drive it away from its normal migration path, they create a confluence of events. Each action collides with another, producing slight, but perceptible, shifts from the original likely results. A few characters are placed in danger, some reach their breaking points, but others arrive at solutions for problems they’ve set aside for too long.

An actress, a quilter, a teacher, a scientist, a grad student, an astronaut, and a rock deejay all become connected in various ways as the butterfly continues on its journey, and we see how each life can touch another, and witness the effects chance encounters can produce.

First 150 Words:

The air was as cold and still as a winter graveyard, and the frost clinging to the needles of the fir trees showed no sign of melting in the crisp morning air. Worried, because this weather could be devastating for the Monarchs, Robert Meyers glanced back at the small group of teachers straggling behind him up the mountain trail at the El Rosario Butterfly Sanctuary.

Beyond making sure they were all accounted for, he also wanted to get another glimpse of Laura Benson. There was something familiar about her, as if he recognized her from some age long past. Ridiculous, of course. He was from Texas and she was from Ontario. His glance caught her eye and she smiled up at him. He responded with a brief twitch of his mouth, but embarrassed at being caught, quickly turned his attention back to the trail and the thick, low fog which had wrapped itself around their ankles, obscuring the ground.